Ken Braun: Evidence in the JFK slaying points at a Mafia plot

"The Road to Dallas: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy" by David Kaiser.

The 50th anniversary of the JFK
assassination is next month: November 22. If you wish to get an
informed head start on the speculating, theorizing, and general
crazy-making conspiracy-buffery, then a reliable source is “The
Road to Dallas: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy,”
by David Kaiser. Written by an historian who logged more than 20
years at the Naval War College, this 2008 book comes with enough
academic gravitas to assure a skeptical reader its facts are reliable
and conclusions well-constructed.

Which is good, because
Kaiser says the President was likely killed as a result of a small
conspiracy.

This is a “who done it?” where some of the
guilty allegedly escape justice by leaving a shooter and murder
weapon almost in plain sight, to be identified within hours. (Of
course, vocal fringe conspiracy-theorists have questioned Oswald’s
guilt for a half century, but Kaiser isn’t one of them.)

Using
government documentation unavailable until 30-plus years after the
slaying, the book builds upon findings reached by the U.S. House
Select Committee on Assassinations in the late-1970s. The HSCA’s
work is poorly understood by many Americans who believe the “official
story” of JFK’s murder is based solely on President Lyndon
Johnson’s 1964 Warren Commission Report, which concluded Oswald and
Ruby acted only for themselves.

But the HSCA
ruled a conspiracy was probable.
Naming no specific suspects, it said a few individuals from two
groups were possible conspirators: the Mafia and “anti-Castro”
Cubans.

In stating a conspiracy is probable, the HSCA cast
doubt on the simple explanation of Oswald as a disgruntled Castro
sympathizer. Kaiser uses official evidence later released and
unavailable to the HSCA to slam home the likely truth: Oswald became
part of a conspiracy to kill Castro, originally hatched from a joint
CIA-Mafia plot, and the Mafia participated in this plot mostly
without the CIA for years after 1960. Even Oswald likely tried an
attempt against Castro shortly before Nov. 22.

Oswald’s
supposed Castro sympathies were probably a disguised effort to
infiltrate a movement he was trying to destroy. The now officially
confirmed CIA-Mafia plots were not understood at all
until 1975, long after many Americans had internalized the “Oswald
alone” belief.

The President’s brother, Attorney General
Robert F. Kennedy, had launched an unprecedented and rather effective
war against organized crime and two mob bosses in particular:
Chicago’s Sam Giancana and Louisiana’s Carlos Marcello. But at
the same time, the CIA-Mafia plots against Castro were ongoing and
under the loose control of gangsters who wanted their Havana casinos
back. Fatefully, the gangsters in charge were Giancana, Marcello, and
Florida’s Santo Trafficante, Jr., a close and powerful Marcello
ally.

Like the HSCA report, this book dismisses the
possibility of a grand conspiracy including all of American
organized crime.

But the simple accusation is this: With
control of a murderous infrastructure the government would not own up
to because the CIA had helped them create it, the three mobsters
turned their well-insulated murder machine on the President so as to
shut down the heat coming at them from his little brother. They
summarized, correctly, that RFK’s hostile relations with Lyndon
Johnson would lead to him quitting his job and ending his organized
crime crusade if LBJ hastily moved into the Presidency.

A
number of our most
highly-regarded organized crime experts strongly
endorse the possibility of these mobsters’ complicity in the
assassination. Kaiser notes several well-timed additional murders -
including Giancana’s just before he was to testify before a U.S.
Senate JFK investigation - will forever conceal any certain proof of
a likely answer to history’s most fascinating murder mystery.

Ken
Braun was a legislative aide for a Republican lawmaker in the
Michigan House and worked for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
He has assisted in a start-up effort to encourage employers to
provide economic education to employees, and is currently the
director of policy for InformationStation.org.
His employer is not responsible for what he says here ... or in
Spartan Stadium on game days.